


XVIII. The Moon

by PostcardsfromTheoryland



Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [16]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Foster Kid Keith (Voltron), Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Garrison, mentor Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23696995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PostcardsfromTheoryland/pseuds/PostcardsfromTheoryland
Summary: The Moon: Anxiety, instability, subconscious, dreamsKeith takes his Galaxy Garrison entrance exams.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: April Tarot Card Prompts [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686346
Comments: 7
Kudos: 73





	XVIII. The Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Follows after the Knave of Wands

By all accounts, Keith should have been asleep right now.

He’d gotten permission to stay on base in Shiro and Matt’s apartment the night before his Galaxy Garrison entrance exams, and they’d made mac and cheese for dinner (well, Shiro had made it, and Matt had mostly made a mess). He’d tried to do one last round of studying after supper, but Shiro had convinced him he already knew the material and so they put on a movie instead.

But now Keith was alone, lying on the couch and trying desperately to sleep. Shiro had offered to take the sofa and let Keith have his bed, but Keith had turned him down. Shiro looked too tall to be able to actually sleep on the couch, and besides, this was loads better than his shitty mattress back at the home. His exams started at 7, and though the commute will be quick he still needs sleep, and it’s already past midnight. But for the first time, maybe in his life, he was _nervous_. About _school_.

Matt had accidentally let it slip that there would be a few more people watching his flight exam than normal. Apparently, word had gotten out about his performance on the Capricorn Run, and they all wanted to see “Shiro’s wonder child” do it again but...what if it had been a fluke? Literally his entire future was riding on how well he did on the tests in the morning, and not just in the long-run, either. He’d stared in awe as Shiro gave him a tour of the some of the complex earlier that night: a cafeteria where you could go up for seconds as many times as you wanted and no bitchy cooks would whack your hand with a hot metal spoon, single dorm rooms so he’d have his own space for the first time in _years_. He’d met Matt’s dad, who was a fucking _Commander_ , and he’d explained that if Keith got in to the Garrison then guardianship of him would probably transfer from the state to one of the Garrison officials. So it wasn’t just a career that depended on his test results, but security: an entire lifestyle for the next few years, and maybe even longer, since Shiro and Matt were still technically part of the Garrison student body but good enough to _get paid_.

It all sounded too good to be true, and what if it was? What if Keith wasn’t good enough? He’d lose this whole opportunity at a new life, and he’d probably lose Shiro in the process, who was the only person who actually seemed to give a fuck about Keith since his dad had died.

Patience yields focus, Shiro had told him as he tried to get his breathing under control.

He _had_ to do well tomorrow. He just had to.

* * *

When Shiro stopped by the sims after Keith’s flight exam time, he’d been expecting to pick up a Keith who looked as pleased as he had at his sim run for the end of their mentorship program. What he got instead was a sobbing mess, tears and snot covering Keith’s face, and couldn’t really get a straight answer out of Keith about what had happened, but he was guessing Keith had choked. It happened to the best of them, but unfortunately Shiro wasn’t sure if Keith had raised his grades enough in the meantime to compensate for a bad sim run.

So he’d guided Keith back to his apartment, bundled him up in a blanket like a little sushi roll, and sat on the couch with an armful of crying pre-teen. There was always next year - Keith could take the exams again and transfer in as a second year, except Keith’s social worker had told him in an undertone, when Keith was hopefully out of earshot, that the group home he was in was getting overcrowded and there was talk of moving several of the kids, Keith included, to a larger one several hours away. He’d just _finally_ started to get Keith to open up to him, and he didn’t think that tenuous trust would survive the distance and upheaval.

There was still the possibility that Sam had put in his head, a way to keep Keith with them and get him out of a shitty situation, but Shiro wasn’t sure how well Keith would take that idea, and he certainly didn’t want to bring it up right now.

“Hey! Who wants ice cream, I’m buying!” Matt shouted as he breezed through the front door, tossing his backpack to the side.

“Matt,” Shiro hissed.

“Oh hey! What’s…” Matt’s face fell as he took in the scene. “Everything ok?”

“His exam didn’t go so well,” Shiro explained.

“Didn’t- dude, what are you talking about??”

“He thinks the written portion was ok, but sounds like maybe nerves got the best of him during the flight test.”

“Except I just came from visiting Dad. I’m not supposed to tell you but I’m a rebel without a cause, and Keith just blew every single flight test entrance exam score out of the water. They’re talking about whether to put him on some kind of accelerated plan to skip a few years.”

“But I crashed,” Keith protested, still not moving from where his face was buried in Shiro’s shoulder.

“Well, yeah, but that’s just because they decided to throw you into the deep end after you cleared all the actual exam material. Keith, did they tell you what Run it was they had you do at the end?”

“Yeah,” Keith sniffled, “cans...vet something?”

If Shiro had been standing up, he would have fallen over. “Canes Venatici?” Keith nodded against him. “What the _fuck_ , Matt?”

“They wanted to see how well he could do,” Matt shrugged. “Dad said you made it over halfway through!”

“I don’t get it,” Keith mumbled.

Shiro was torn between being giddy at Keith’s success because _holy shit_ and being furious that the examiners hadn’t bothered to explain to Keith that the Canes run wasn’t actually part of the exam. “That’s...an advanced course,” he explained. “Normally students at the Garrison don’t try Canes Venatici until their fourth year.”

Keith finally poked his head out of his blanket cocoon at that, looking up at Shiro through shiny, puffy eyes. “Really?”

“First time I tried it I didn’t make it past the black hole,” Shiro admitted.

“So!” Matt said brightly. “Ice cream! I’ll give you a few minutes to, you know.” He waved his hands in a vague motion which Shiro took to mean ‘calm Keith down and help him look like he hasn’t just bawled his eyes out.’

“How are you doing?” Shiro asked gently. The blanket bundle in his arms shifted into a shrug. “We don’t need to go get ice cream, if you don’t want. We can stay here and let you relax a bit.”

“No! No, I...want to. I don’t get ice cream much, otherwise.”

“We’ve got plenty of time. The good ice cream place in town doesn’t close until late tonight.” Shiro could hear Keith’s breath starting to steady, hand rubbing up and down his back.

“I really...did ok?”

Shiro couldn’t help laughing, just a little bit. “If they decided to give you the Canes Venatici just for fun to see what you could do with it, you’re getting in. Doesn’t matter if you somehow got negative scores on everything else. Facts you can learn, but you’ve got some kind of instinctual knowledge of how to pilot. How did you get past the black hole, anyways? That tripped me up the first few times I tried that Run.”

“I still had two of the drones following me, so I let them get close enough, flew between them, pretended to stall, and then when they both tried to attack me, I dove out of the way. They blew each other up instead and I used the force of the explosions to break out of the black hole’s gravitational field.”

“Holy fuck, Keith.” Shiro couldn’t help it, and anyways it was worth it when Keith giggled a little in response. “You’re definitely going to be at the Garrison next fall. Are you excited?”

“I wish I could start tomorrow,” Keith admitted, and Shiro got it. The Garrison was still a military school, and there were some rules Keith would need to get used to, but the stability, the space to grow into his own person; it would do him wonders.

And in the meantime, Shiro would be there with him, every step of the way.


End file.
